Recent news

Recent NHS data revealed that young people living in London drink substantially less than those in the north of England, reported BBC News.

The North East was reported to have the highest level of drinking and smoking over the past three years. With 20 per cent of the 11 – 15 years olds surveyed in the North West admitting to taking drugs in the past year. This is compared with only 15 per cent in the South West.

A quarter of those surveyed in the North East had drunk alcohol during the past week and this was closely followed by Yorkshire and Humber. This is compared with 12 per cent in London.

The quantities which the teenagers drunk in different areas showed quite a variance, with Londoners drinking the equivalent of a bottle and Northerners drinking double that amount.

Generally these figures have started to fall with only 18 per cent admitting to drinking in the past week...

A mentally ill man who killed a Derbyshire student was not properly assessed or cared for, reported BBC News.

Khalid Peshawan, 33, killed Halimah Ahmed at his Derbyshire home in 2007 before hanging himself. The health and social care Advisory Service report into Mental health Services in Derby criticised Mr Peshawans diagnosis and care.

Although the report stated there was no link between Mr Peshwan’s care the incident, it is said that mental health services failed to diagnose his condition and the care he received was inadequate.

The parents of Mr Ahmed were unhappy about the timing of the report being released on the same day as two or more relating to the treatment of people involved in other deaths in the East Midlands.

A spokeswoman for the East Midlands Health Authority has said that they chose to release the reports on the same day because they came...

Psychiatry professor Alistair Burns has taken on the huge task of overseeing how dementia is dealt with in England, reports BBC News

His job will involve continuing leadership of the dementia strategy launched last year by health secretary Alan Johnson. Alongside this his job will also be to promote better care of people with dementia within the NHS environment and in social care throughout England.

An ageing population means that the number of people with dementia is always on the rise as a result of this it is expected that the number of people diagnosed will rise to one million within a decade.

Prof Burns said: “In the past few years, there has been a great deal of public interest in dementia and several influential initiatives, in particular the national dementia strategy.

“The challenge now is to build on this to make a real positive difference to people with...

Scottish government have revealed staggering figures showing that children who self-harm have been admitted to hospital more than 7,000 times in the past decade, reported BBC News.

Public Health Minister Shona Robinson has promised an extra £5.5m worth of investment for mental health services. She has said that this will lead to a 15-20% increase in specialist staff by 2011-12.

Liberal Democrat Health Spokesman Ross Finnie was said to be astounded by the statistics which showed that across all of Scotland’s health board areas, there were 7,126 hospital admissions for self-harm under 16s.

The figures, which run from 1999-2009, peaked in 2000-01 when they hit the high seven hundreds but they have gradually decreased in recent years, reaching a figure of 563 in 2008-09.

Over 16s showed a similar pattern with 160,668 admissions in the same 10 year period and the figures...

If any if you caught GMTV yesterday morning you probably would have been witness to the staggering results of their latest survey to see how depression affects us Brits.

The results of their 2010 survey showed that three out of four viewers say that they have suffered with depression at some point. It also revealed that one in two have been prescribed anti-depressants whilst over 60% admitted that depression had had a negative impact on their relationships.

The results:

69% asked said they suffered with depression
77% had suffered from depression in the past
47% had actually been diagnosed with depression
43% felt their illness was taken seriously by their doctor
But 45% felt their illness wasn’t take seriously by their friends and family
50% had been prescribed anti-depressants to treat their depression
Only 31% have had counselling to deal with depression
38% have had time of work because of...

After the wounds have healed, the dead have been buried and Port-au-Prince rebuilt the invisible wounds of Haiti will still remain.

From those trapped under rubble, to those who lost someone, to rescue workers searching for survivors, the vast majority of those exposed to the catastrophe will experience some kind of emotional aftershock and will need counselling to help them through their grief.

The Sun recently reported that British firefighters have been ordered to have trauma counselling over the horrors they witnessed whilst searching for survivors among the debris. A West Midlands team recently tunnelled into a collapsed supermarket to find the body of a guard cut in two by a falling pillar, the kind of scene that could distress even the most hardened rescue worker.

Over weight patients may have to be prescribed larger doses of antibiotic, reports BBC News.

Larger adults may not be receiving a big enough dose to clear infection and there is a risk that resistance will develop to the ‘one size fits all’ dose.

Around one in four adults in England are classified as obese, thats an increase of 15% since 1993. Size and the proportion of body fat a person carried can affect the concentration of antibiotics in the body, potentially reducing the effect in larger patients. Given the fact people are getting larger, use of standard doses of antibiotics in all adults, regardless of size, is outdated.

GPs said it was an interesting theory but may end up being expensive as pharmaceutical companies would need to alter the doses to come in a number of different sizes to suit body weights.

Likewise, smaller than average patients may get too much drug, and suffer...

A recent study has revealed that adults in Scotland are consuming the equivalent of a staggering 46 bottles of vodka in a year reports BBC News.

The 50.5 million litres of pure alcohol sold in Scotland last year was enough for every drinker over the age of 18 to exceed the weekly consumption guidelines. With figures such as these splashed around the media it is only furthering the Scottish government’s wish to implement minimum alcohol pricing in a bid to stop alcohol abuse from becoming Scotland’s biggest health issue.

The figures are based on sales data which was analysed by NHS Health Scotland and it concluded that people in Scotland drank 25% more alcohol per head of the population than individuals in England and Wales.
This is the first time the figure has risen since back in 2005 and is now the equivalent of 537 pints or 130 bottles of wine per person.

A recent report from BBC news highlights the benefits of a drug which is normally used to lower blood pressure, in the fight against Alzhemier’s disease.

People taking angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) are 50% less likely to develop dementia than those taking other blood pressure drugs. Research has shown that when ARBs are combined with another drug it also protects those who already have the disease from any further deterioration.

The race is now on to discover new and effective treatments for dementia as the latest calculations have suggested more than 115 million people across the globe will suffer from the illness by 2050. Those who suffer from high blood pressure for a prolonged period of time are at risk of developing damaged blood vessels which is known to increase not only the risk of strokes but also heart disease and dementia.

During the last six months the number of 18 to 24 year olds seeking help for bipolar disorder has doubled, reported BBC Radio One.

Before one of the nations favourite soaps tackled the issue of bipolar using popular character Stacey Slater to highlight the disorder it was a subject which many new very little about.

However, since the storyline in BBC One soap EastEnders began the number of young people calling helplines rocketed from around 400 a day to an average of more than 800.

Affecting more than half a million people in the UK, the mental disorder is characterized by stages of feeling very low and depressed to extreme high known as manias and is most common in those ages between 18 and 24.

EastEnders star Lacey Turner has won several awards for her portrayal of bipolar sufferer stacey slater. She admitted that she had never even...